The family of the eight-years-deceased alleged victim of a cruel prank by a teenaged Mitt Romney reacted angrily to the Washington Post story yesterday — but not for the reasons one might imagine. Calling the Washington Post story “factually inaccurate,” the sisters of the late John Lauber lashed out at the Post for using him to “further a political agenda” (via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit):

The older sister of Mitt Romneys former high school classmate said she has no knowledge of any bullying incident involving her brother and the GOP presidential candidate.

Christine Lauber of South Bend, Ind., had not seen the Washington Posts story that described an incident when Mitt Romney bullied her brother, but said she was aware of the story. The incident centered around Romney allegedly holding the scissors to help cut the hair of John Lauber, who was presumed to be gay and who had long hair.

Neither of his sisters had heard of the incident from their brother, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. That’s not their main complaint, though:

Betsy Lauber, one of John Laubers three sisters, spoke with ABC News Tuesday night regarding the accuracy of the story.

The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda. There will be no more comments from the family, she said.

Christine Lauber echoed her sister:

She added she and her sisters will likely put out a statement later via a family attorney.

If he were still alive today, he would be furious [about the story], she said with tears in her eyes.

ABC notes that both sisters were quoted in the WaPo article. It seems that they were unaware of the real subject matter, or at least the way the Post intended to use their recollections of their brother. It might be interesting to see what else an attorney might have to say about the matter.

But hey, let’s drop this so we can get back to the fascinating details of Obama’s formative years...uh, I mean his college years....Or, uh, his activities at law school...his composite girlfriends...where he was born...

If he’d suddenly returned home with a hair cut that was very different from what he started out with, they’d have asked and learned about the alleged incident. This is beginning o look like the Duke Rape Case.

All these media jerks are doing are forcing people like me who cant stand Romney to consider voting for him.

Yeah, I wish he'd just shut up. Now Romnesty says he agrees with homosexuals adopting babies . . . this in light of the fact that there are thousands of heterosexual (normal) couples trying to adopt, but having to go to China, Russian, S. America to find children. This also in light of the fact that we ruthlessly murder 3,300 American babies in this country EVERY DAY.

It's going to be all I can do to vote for this democrat like I had to be forced to vote for Dole, Bush, Sr., and McLame.

Better that he just shut his mouth and let the homo-in-chief do all the talking.

Assuming the family all lived together (or even if not) wouldn't the girls remember if their brother had long hair and returned home from school with it cut. Plus, if Romney or anyone cut it off, I am sure it was not a barbershop type cut. The boy would have walked around with a very strange hairdo, I am sure...and many would have remembered that.

On the other hand, how could Romney NOT have any memory of anything like that he might have done?

I suspect something happened, but not a haircut with scissors. Maybe just the threat took place and now it is being blown out of proportion by the Libs.

19
posted on 05/11/2012 7:33:35 AM PDT
by CitizenM
(Obama studied our Constution because he hates it, not because he loves our country or laws.)

If hed suddenly returned home with a hair cut that was very different from what he started out with, theyd have asked and learned about the alleged incident. **********************************************

Exactly, it wouldn't just be a hair cut, it would be a butcher job that would have to be fixed.

The incident centered around Romney allegedly holding the scissors to help cut the hair of John Lauber, who was presumed to be gay and who had long hair.

What the heck kind of claim is this? First of all, it doesn't say Romney cut his hair, he just "held the scissors". Whatever does that mean? The it says "presumed to be gay"? By who? The teens who did this? The promoters of the story? In 65, having long hair certainly didn't mean homosexual.

This all sounds like a lot of BS to me.

29
posted on 05/11/2012 7:50:00 AM PDT
by MEGoody
(Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.)

Romney cant remember whether or not he assaulted someone with scissors?

To be fair, politicians (especially those who are running against a media darling) are asked "out in left field" questions all the time. The safest thing to say is "I don't recall" until you can regroup mentally and figure out what the question is actually about.

If Romney firmly denied this, then it turns out something did happen that was a little bit, sorta like the story (but not really), and he hadn't remembered it, then he'll look like a fool, a liar, or both.

31
posted on 05/11/2012 7:53:42 AM PDT
by MEGoody
(Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.)

Exactly. It might not have been some drastic "laid him down and cut off his hair" big incident.

And, even is something did happen...in those days homosexuality was not something kids were openly discussing. The kid's long hair...and how that was so different from the short hair boys wore then, might have been the issue...not his sexual orientation (if that was even known). Long hair was just starting to be in style for a lot of boys/men in those days and not just gays. Actually, back in the '60's gays were still very careful not to show or do anything to attract attention to their sexual orientation.

Heck, I remember in grade school when I had long pig tails and the boy behind me used to try to tie them together and always teased me that he was going to cut them off. Perhaps the kid in Romney's school had his hair pulled back in a ponytail and they teased him and just threatened to cut it, or even snipped some of it. The kid might have lost some hair, but no assault type incident occurred. That would be more like a stupid prank, but not done because the kid was gay.

Still, Romney should have a clear memory of exactly what did happen. A person just does not forget something like that if they did it, or what was done. So I don't think that we are hearing the full truth from either side about this story.

35
posted on 05/11/2012 8:16:52 AM PDT
by CitizenM
(Obama studied our Constution because he hates it, not because he loves our country or laws.)

The hypothesis that Mitt did bring or carry scissors, but then a struggle followed that didn’t involve Mitt and the guy got away unshorn or maybe with one unnoticeable snip taken off, seems to fit what everybody close to it, including Mitt, is reporting so far.

I know about the long hair. When the Beatles splashed on the scene all of a sudden all boys who wanted to be cool wanted a Beatle haircut. I did. Well into the seventies :-).

36
posted on 05/11/2012 8:23:48 AM PDT
by HiTech RedNeck
(Mitt! You're going to have to try harder than that to be "severely conservative" my friend.)

Yet the hair cutting incident is not far removed from what would have been standard fare for pranking and hazing in high school 50 years ago. I guarantee you every politician that age and older from a wealthy background, would have to say they don’t recall when asked a question like that. This includes both Dems and Pubs.

You would be sitting there thinking, Okay we duct taped, penny-locked, made a kid run around the dorm naked, I don’t remember if we forcibly cut somebody’s hair.

LOL, you mean like the guy in the movie "Jackass" who sneaks up on people in their group with a pair of electric clippers and takes a retangular clump of hair out before they figure it out, or the ones where all the hair comes off?

Of course, in the pre-politically correct days in the military, there was always some kind of hazing that was accepted. The stuff I saw, nobody got hurt, but we could have.

There was one initiation where a bunch of people would wrestle a person to the ground and smear him with a thick, gooey black molybdenum based grease that was nearly impossible to get off with anything other than a butter knife and jet fuel. This was your initiation to "The Line Shack" where the plane captains had to work for a year or two.

Basically, everyone would lie in wait, and when the person would walk in everyone jumped them and wrestled them to the ground. If you were the object, you were expected to put up a struggle.

The harder the struggle and the longer it took, the more respect you got, and size was factored in. Once done, that was it, and you were expected to participate in other "greasings" as they called them, though you didn't have to, and nobody made a fuss if you didn't.

I never saw anyone get hurt, and to this day that amazes me, because there were often desks and chairs being overturned, and fairly violent struggles as the scrum of people went back and forth in a compartment made of steel.

There were a few guys who just went limp and let themselves get the grease. They were repeatedly targeted for greasing.

One night on the ship, I was walking to the line shack, and as I approached a hatch, the upper part of a human body suddenly lunged into the passageway, then as the person gripped the edges was pulled back. I only saw that half as I approached. The guy yelled out "Help! Help me!" and as I passed, I saw a group of guys, laughing and grinning, pulling him inexorably back into the compartment. One could only imagine...

I did see one incident that, to this day, impresses me.

We had a young Airman Apprentice, Timothy Narumaya, arrive in our squadron one day. He was about 5'4", and oddly enough, we had heard a few stories about him through the grapevine as he progressed through the training squadron.

This was the guy (picture is blurry from the cruise book):

They said he was some ridiculous thing like a 10th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do (I remember someone saying that, but I don't even know if that is a real ranking...you know how those types of stories are!) Well, he didn't disappoint.

That guy knew something, and we saw him in the hangar bay one day sparring with the top seargent in the Marine detachment, who was a physically impressive and big guy. (He was later the top ranking enlisted Marine killed in the Beruit barracks bombing...GySgt Douglass.)

Anyway, the guy KNEW stuff, and giving away height and weight, was impressive to us watching.

So, one day he goes up to the flight deck, and we were all lying in wait when he came down to jump him and "grease" him.

The hatch opened, he walked in and saw us all standing there looking at him. He said: "You can do what you want, but I won't be responsible if anyone goes to Sick Bay."

That being said, I believe that what Romney did to that poor fellow high school student was terrible, if the story is true. If the story is true, Romney should try to do something to make peace with himself and the boy's family.

As I thought about this Romney story, it caused me to shudder a little bit as I recalled how I and some other boys in our small private school many years ago picked on this one unattractive girl in our class over and over all through high school.

I can't or don't want to know why we did it or why we somehow picked her out so many years ago to be the target of our teasing, teasing that sometimes turned into terrible ridicule, and, which, looking back, may have often brought the poor girl to tears. To this day, I feel bad about what we did to that poor innocent girl.

I remember that she was shy and vulnerable. I can barely remember her name, but I could easily look at my yearbook and find her name, but I don't want to. I guess I am too ashamed to look at her picture and her name again.

I'm just an average person who will never run for public office and who will never be a famous person, although my family has friends who are public officials and other friends who are nationally known persons.

So what terrible damage I may have done to the high school girl's life many years ago will not come out in public like Romney's story came out in public, because I will never run for public office.

I don't know what I would tell Romney if I was advising him on this matter.

I might tell him that if the story is true, he should admit it and apologize to the boy's family, and maybe the boy's family and the public---especially those of us who have bullied fellow schoolmates during our high school days and are now very sorry for what we did--will forgive him and let him move on.

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